So grateful to American Illustration and the the jury this year (Steve Byram, Artist and Designer, Screw Gun Records, Chris Dixon, Design Director, Vanity Fair, Marti Golon, Art Director, Reader’s Digest, Amy Hausmann, Deputy Director, MTA Arts for Transit & Urban Design, Peter Morance, Art Director, The New York Times Science, Len Small, Art Director, Graphic Designer, Nautilus, Alex Spiro, Creative Director, co-Founder, Nobrow ) for awarding my two covers for The Nation coveted spots in the annual show, one of the top honors in our world of illustration.

I am very grateful that my work is recognized, as always, but especially proud that this recognition is for work in The Nation. It is a long partnership that has resulted in my doing some of my best work. Thanks to Editors Katrina vanden Heuvel, Roane Carey and Designer Robert Best.

For my first cover for the redesigned NY Observer, art director Lauren Draper asked for a portrait of the mayor of NY, Bill DeBlasio, feeling triumphant after his signature agenda item, pre-kindergarten for all NY children, passed the legislature. Thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running THIS year (and maybe again next) this will be done without a tax hike. It is a moment to savor for the new mayor . . . and for our kids.

Here is the genesis of this cover.

Many thanks to Lauren, who would take every sketch and try it in layout for me. There was a rare back-and-forth that resulted in good communication all round.

Also great fun to be on board with David Heasty and Stephanie Wagner of Triboro Design who took the peachy paper and re-imagined it as a mag. This is the third one since the re-D. What they have kept is their appreciation of illustration. Ken Kurson EIC, and Jared Kushner Publisher very responsible for that and so much else.

The first idea was to have BDB huge behind a small desk. Not quite right.

Then there was the BDB rearing back with a big smile and a blackboard with my bit of copy on it. This was approved and then edited. The copy would be more straightforward and have my line in at the end.

Then there was this finished sketch sent to Lauren via cell phone camera.

Later on, I sent a more finished image. Thanks to Lauren this is the first sense I had of how this might look.

Here, then, is the cover that will be on stands tomorrow. Illustration is a hardwork/greatfun thing.

Here’s a tribute to the use of illustration as infographic; communicating information about an issue or a character directly and powerfully through drawings and paintings. In my recent travels I have been working at this in different ways. Here’s a nicely handled click-through by The Washington Post. See it HERE. On the first Debt Ceiling Crisis. The art moves easily (no video commercials to disrupt the flow). Not very much opinion expressed here actually. It’s mostly illustrated reportage via the Post staff.

This chart on gun-influenced members of Congress for The American Prospect. It was a spread that linked portraiture and data.

Here’s a limited scroll down. A larger project: the story of the first Jews in New Amsterdam, for Tablet.

A recent piece for the LA Times on the Oscars. HERE’s how it looks online.

The Mad Men of Climate Change Denial took the meme of the TV show, added these galoots and then data.

Last July’s NY Times OpEd page (here was the working layout) on signers of the Declaration of Independence. I did the research and the drawing. Matt Dorfman helped tremendously in organizing the page. Then the famous Times fact checkers came in. Hail to the Chiefs. Here’s the online slide show.

Here’s Mitt Romney delivering his acceptance speech at the 2012 GOP Convention. I covered both conventions live for The Nation, sending in a drawing every 15 minutes or so. By the end of the week we had posted about 156 pieces of illustration: HERE

FYI . . .

Steve Brodner feels he is a newcomer to illustration but that's because he has a really bad memory. Much of his career is worth remembering in any case. Most of it has been about a guy getting to absolutely live his dream; making pictures that make stabs at telling the truth in print about things he feels are important. He is still at it, now moving across platforms, believing, with some justification, that we are all content providers and can now see our ideas shape and get shaped by all manner of media. This site is dedicated to that. And above all, to the best of our imperfect faculties, to telling the truth.

Caricature is…

Caricature, which is a subcategory of illustration, is about finding the narrative elements within a portrait and making them clear as tools in making literal and figurative points. When done for publication, it is not merely about making big things bigger and small things smaller. It is storytelling. This involves knowledge about what is under the surface of a face and teasing it to the top. Caricature is not the destination. It is the journey. It's the bike you ride.